New high-tech tricks for the Fantastic Fest site...

It's not quite up to James Bond's bag of tricks, but the folks at BSide are making some improvements to the site this year to incorporate more PDA access for the Fantastic Fest website. We'll be making a few more announcements about other fun schedule tools for the Fantastic fest website soon, but we wanted to let you know about a new feature that was just announced by our pals at BSide, who run the Fantastic Fest community pages:

Now you can use your cell phone's SMS feature to get Fantastic Fest schedule information on the go and even rate the movies you see from your seat!

Just text your commands to this number: 47647

1. To set your phone to Fantastic Fest, send: bside fe fantasticfest2007

(You only have to do this once. You will get a confirmation message.)

2. To get showtimes, you can just text: bside show now

or, you can get showtimes for a specific time and date, like this: bside show fri 9pm

To see showtimes by title, send: bside show title

"Title" may be any part of a film's title -- no need to punch in the whole thing.

3. To rate a film you've seen on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), send: bside rate title rating

For example, you could rate "Napoleon Dynamite" as excellent by sending: bside rate napoleon 5

When you're home in front of a computer, log in to fantasticfest.bside.com and create an account. Enter your cell phone number into your profile and your phone ratings will automatically be associated with your Fantastic Fest B-Side account!

You can always send "bside help" to 47647 for more information.